INANNA. Inanna, the Sumerian astral deity representing the planet Venus, was known throughout the Mesopotamian world. The Akkadians (and later the Assyro-Babylonians) called her Ishtar. For both the Sumerians and the Akkadians she was the principal goddess in their respective pantheons. Inanna-Ishtar's closest counterparts to the west are the Canaanite Astarte and the later goddesses of Greece and Rome, Aphrodite and Venus.

When the Semitic Akkadians settled in the lower Tigris-Euphrates Basin, they assimilated the preexisting, predominantly Sumerian culture. Comparative Semitic evidence suggests that the Akkadian Venus deity was originally masculine but became completely feminized when identified with the female Sumerian deity Inanna. Because of the eventual syncretism of the Sumerian and Akkadian pantheons, the traditions concerning Inanna-Ishtar are extremely complicated. By one such tradition she is the daughter of the sky god An, by another the daughter of the moon god Nanna-Sin (and thereby the sister of...